


Following Theseus's Thread

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood, Choice paralysis, Multi, Panic Attack, Powerful Gay Yearning, Spoilers Through Episode 157, discovery of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 13:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21037154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Jon’s body is still sitting at his desk. He can feel the wood of the chair beneath him, can feel the tape recorder underneath his hand like The Admiral when he used to push himself between Jon and his statements and demand to be petted. It’s Jon’s mind that’s filled with fog, Jon’s inner eye that is searching through the endless gray. This is the eye that Sees, and what it Sees is a silver, glittering thread, almost lost in the gray.Jon’s first thought is of spiders, cobwebs, The Web. His second thought though, his second thought is of Greek mythology, Theseus tying the end of a skein of thread to the entrance of the labyrinth of the Minotaur so that he could find his way back out again.What can be followed out can also be followed in.





	Following Theseus's Thread

Jon has never been more keenly aware of the passage of time as he is right now, as he sits at his desk. There are two tape recorders in front of him, the one containing Martin’s tape, silent at the moment, and the other which whirrs gently as it records the silence for posterity. Jon’s glasses lay between them like an offering as he presses the palms of his hands against his eyes, the pressure doing little to ease the sickening throb of pain inside his skull.

There’s a debate going on inside his head, has been for hours now, even as he had talked to Georgie and Melanie, even as he had pleaded with Helen to tell him what was going on. He’s given up on leaving voicemails on Daisy and Basira’s phones, and even though part of him thinks he should go talk to Elias, part of him is afraid that it will just end up wasting more time, if it matters. It might already be too late, but it might not be, but it _will_ be if he doesn’t _do _something. Unless doing something will just make it _worse._

Jon’s thoughts spin, a carousel of indecision, and this has happened before, this helplessness in the face of too many choices, or being confronted with a choice he had not expected to make. He feels his jaw clench. He hates that his brain is reacting to a _literal _possibly world-ending situation the same way that it would if the deli had run out of corned beef and he had to decide on something different for lunch. It just seems so _wrong._

He reaches out with one trembling hand and hits the play button on the turned off tape recorder without even having to look. Maybe this time, unlike all the other times, he’ll find some sort of clarity in Martin’s words.

“Some things are just hard,” Martin says, as if he’s speaking directly to Jon, as if those words had been meant for exactly this moment. “Anyway. I know he’s been listening to the tapes, so I guess that’ll have to do.

I think I still care that he hears my voice. It’s hard to tell, sometimes. How much do I actually care, and how much is just feeling that I _should_ care?”

Jon clicks the tape recorder back off and takes a shaking, shuddering breath. Martin’s words echo in the hollow, bruised chambers of his heart. “How did I miss that?” Jon says out loud. “If I missed your… attraction? Affection? What else have I missed? If I had just _seen_ what was right there in front of me, would this be happening now? Or would it just be happening differently?”

Jon shakes his head, wincing. “Not helpful. Break down the options. _Focus,” _he tells his brain, as if that will help_. “_Option one, do nothing. Which isn’t even a real choice, it’s just inaction, which is what I’m trying to _avoid._” Frustration isn’t helping, anger isn’t helping, but he can’t seem to stop himself.

“Right. Option two. Do what Helen suggested and—find something to eat, to prepare myself for whatever is going to happen. And—“ His breath comes out in a ragged sigh. “Part of me wants to do that. Part of me wants to do that very _very_ much. It’s so _easy_ to rationalize that as being the right thing to do, and it’d be so easy to rationalize that again and again and again. There would always be a reason I’d need to stay strong, and what’s one person’s terror, or ten people’s, or a hundred, against the world? But then again, if I became a monster and saved the world, well, the world would still be saved. My… can I even call it humanity anymore? My humanity isn’t worth the continued lives of everyone else.” He chuckles dryly. “And there’s me rationalizing. That’s how easy it is.”

“Option three.” Jon pulls his hands away from his eyes and tries to draw comfort from the soft, blurred lines of the world. “Option three is to go down into the tunnels after Martin. I have his voice, and Daisy’s voice was enough to find her when I went down into the coffin, but I don’t know—“ He feels his heart begin to beat faster. “What if it’s not enough? I don’t have a map and Helen—“ The sting of betrayal is a sharp pain in his chest. “She refuses to help me. I thought Martin didn’t want my help, but he knows I listen to the tapes, _his_ tapes, and what if he’s depending on me to figure all this out and come after him and he’s got some sort of plan and then I don’t show up? But what if I’m wrong and he’s been telling me to stay away and I don’t listen because I let my _feelings_—“

And that’s where the words die in Jon’s throat, replaced with the sound of his breathing, too hard and too fast. Because there _were_ feelings, weren’t there? They had been like seeds in deep soil, shoots struggling to the far away surface as Jon had tried to push more dirt on top of them, because there had always been something else to deal with, and Martin was always there, would always _be _there except then he hadn’t been, and now he wasn’t and Jon’s feelings are fast growing vines crowding out thought and breath and he doesn’t have _time_ to panic—

His hands feel like they’re in another country as they frantically open a drawer in his desk. There’s many reasons he keeps his rib close by, and one of them is because, as possibly disturbing and macabre as it might be (as if he’s any judge these days, as if any of them are), holding a piece of himself is strangely comforting, even if the fact that it’s a part of himself that’s supposed to be _inside_ of him instead of outside makes him feel queasy if he thinks about it for any length of time. His fingers slide off the jar of Jane Prentiss’s ashes, skitter across the bottom of the drawer— and find nothing.

The shock is like a slap to the face, painful and disorientating as Jon snatches up his glasses and looks into the drawer for himself. His hands hadn’t been lying, there’s only the jar and nothing else, no gentle white curve of a piece of himself tucked into a corner of the wood. He opens the next drawer, the next, the next, pencils and papers and tapes hitting the floor with the force of his search. It’s not there. _It’s not there._

Jon’s hand holds his side as he struggles to breathe. He can still feel it, that empty hollow place inside himself. How many more pieces will he lose?

“Who would have taken it?” Jon doesn’t know who he’s asking, except he does, doesn’t he? “Who would have wanted to?”

Gray fog creeps across his vision, and for a moment Jon thinks that he’s about to pass out from hyperventilation or shock and then he’s surrounded—

_The fog is everywhere, gray and cold and calming. No, not calming. Numbing. Numbing is all right though. Numb is better than panic, better than fear or doubt or other more complicated emotions. All there is is gray, nothing to look at but gray, and that’s nice, isn’t it? Not to have to _ ** _see_ ** _ anything for a change? He could just stand here (he’s standing, when did he get up?) and stare into the fog and not do anything at all. No one will find him here. No one would will come to him with their problems and their feelings, no one will tell him what he should be doing or what he shouldn’t. No one will betray him here. There’s no one here to disappoint. He can just— enjoy being alone._

** _Click._ **

“I’m on my own so much these days, I… just wish I didn’t like it so much.”

_Martin’s voice is an intrusion, but one that brings clarity. Jon’s body is still sitting at his desk. He can feel the wood of the chair beneath him, can feel the tape recorder underneath his hand like The Admiral when he used to push himself between Jon and his statements and demand to be petted. It’s Jon’s mind that’s filled with fog, Jon’s inner eye that is searching through the endless gray. This is the eye that Sees, and what it Sees is a silver, glittering thread, almost lost in the gray._

_Jon’s first thought is of spiders, cobwebs, The Web. His second thought though, his second thought is of Greek mythology, Theseus tying the end of a skein of thread to the entrance of the labyrinth of the Minotaur so that he could find his way back out again._

_What can be followed out can also be followed in._

_Jon’s consciousness follows the thread as elsewhere the tape recorder plays on, Martin’s voice recounting the statement of Adelard Dekker. The thread is hard to see, and the fog is a thick, tangible force that he mentally has to push through. It’s a strain, and he can feel the eyes of his physical self ache and burn, something warm trailing down his cheeks, over his lips. It’s distant enough that he can ignore it, and that’s good, because he can’t stop, can’t slow down. He Knows, in that way he Knows things, the way people know things in dreams, that the thread will disappear when the tape ends, when Martin’s voice, both guide and anchor, stops speaking. Then he’ll be truly lost. He has to keep going if he wants to see what’s at the end of the thread._

_Time is strange in the fog. Jon has Martin’s words to measure time by, and yet it feels like days have passed by the time he sees something else in the fog besides the thread. A shadow. And oh, he knows the shape of that shadow like he knows his own reflection._

_“_Statement ends.”

_Jon only has minutes now. He’s not running, he has no body to run with here, but he moves faster, closer. The fog becomes even thicker, even colder as he gets closer to the shadow, as the shadow moves further away. He has no voice to call out with, but the desire is there, and maybe the shadow senses that. Maybe that’s why it stops moving, why the fog thins for an instant._

_Martin Blackwood turns around. One hand holds a torch while the other stays in his pocket, but Jon can make out the barest hint of white bone, the piece of Jon that he had taken, perhaps figuring that Jon would be able to find his way to it as he had when he had been under the ground. But that piece of himself was not what has lead Jon here, there is no thread tied around that part of himself._

_The silver thread, so thin, so very thin, shines as it spools forth from its source, and Jon Knows that only he can See it, Knows what it is made of._

_Jon has no literal eyes here, no form, but when Martin looks at him, silver thread unwinding from his chest, the strands made up of Martin’s desire for connection, Jon Knows that somehow he has been Seen._

_“Martin?” Peter’s tone is one of cheerful admonishment. “Do try to keep up. We have a little ways to go yet, and I would _ ** _hate_ ** _ to lose you now.”_

“Jon?” Basira’s voice sounds rough, as if she’s been screaming. “Jon? Can you hear me?”

“That’s a lot of blood,” Daisy says and if Basira’s voice sounds rough than Daisy’s sounds like something that’s been dragged down five miles of bad road. “Do you think he tried to— you know, blind himself? And it didn’t work?”

_“Hurry_,” _Martin mouths silently and then he’s turning away and—_

Color and light and sensation come rushing back into Jon’s world like blood suddenly rushing into a limb that has fallen asleep and he makes a pained sound as he shuts his eyes against it all. His stomach lurches and he might have been sick if he hadn’t eaten anything at all that day. Instead he grips the sides of his chair as he adjusts to physical sensations again, opening his eyes the slightest bit.

Daisy and Basira are both staring back at him. Basira’s face is set in the same, stoic lines he’s used to, but there is something about her eyes that betrays her, something lost and haunted. Daisy looks _hollow_, and while there’s that lost and haunted look in her eyes as well, there’s also a fierceness there. Not the Hunt, he knows what that looks like, but a wild possessiveness, like someone has tried to take something from her and she was _not _going to let it happen again.

As he opens his eyes further, he sees that the two of them are not just holding hands so tightly that his own knuckles ache just looking at them, but their wrists are lashed together with Daisy’s belt. He Sees it now, the two of them in the Underground, separated by a crowd of people with blurred faces, with their voices like screams. How they had shouted, how they had struggled, how they had found themselves suddenly in empty tunnels, the near endless wandering, how Daisy had ridden the edge of what her blood wanted so that she could find Basira again.

“It wanted us apart,” Jon says. There’s the taste of salt and copper on his lips when he speaks and the feel of something tacky on his face. When he swipes a hand across his cheek it comes back smeared with red, and he remembers feeling something warm dripping down his cheeks when he had pushing himself to move through the fog. Bloody tears. “It doesn’t want us to make it there in time.”

“Where?” Basira asks, and both her and Daisy move forward when Jon gets up from the desk and immediately stumbles. He notices she doesn’t ask _what_.

“Jon, your skin is like _ice_,” Daisy says as she moves to steady him.

“It was cold where I was. Kind of. It doesn’t matter,” Jon says quickly. “We have to find Martin. He’s in the tunnels, with Peter, and we have to find him before they get to the center. They’re going to do— something. Something bad. Maybe end the world bad. We have to stop it.”

“Jon, you’re in no shape to do _anything_,” Basira tells him as if he doesn’t know. “And Daisy—“

“Basira,” Daisy cuts in. “I love you, I do, and I can speak for myself. Please.”

“Sorry.” That lost look in Basira’s eyes bleeds into her voice. Jon sees her squeeze Daisy’s hand, sees Daisy squeeze back.

“It’s been a long day—week—several lifetimes—“ Daisy says. “Time was really weird where we were.” She turns her head and smiles crookedly at Basira. “All I want is several stiff drinks and to fall asleep next to you and wake up to the smell of your blueberry pancakes, and I’m not going to get that if the world ends or changes or whatever. And— you know me. And I know you. Both of us would rather go down fighting, if we get to choose.”

Basira lets out a tired sigh and rests her forehead against Daisy’s. “Yeah. Yeah you’re right.”

“Always am.”

Basira squeezes Daisy’s hand one more time. “No one is going to take you from me again.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Jon says, and it’s true, but it can't be helped. “But we have to go. _Now.”_

They all make their way towards the trapdoor that leads down into the tunnels, stopping only long enough to grab torches.

“How are we going to find him?” Basira asks. “It’s a literal maze down there.”

“Martin took something with him,” Jon says. “I’ve— _Seen_ where it is, and it’s mine, and that should make it easier to find him.”

“What was it?” Daisy asks.

“My rib,” Jon says out loud. _My heart_, he thinks foolishly to himself as they enter the tunnels. _My heart._

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. Listen. The power of love *probably* won't fix everything canonically, but damn if I can't try for it in fic. 
> 
> I'm angel_ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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